115 Fun Facts About Tea

Tea is brewed from the leaves of which plant species?

Camellia sinensis would grow into a tall tree if left alone; growers prune it to about waist height so the tender new shoots are easy to pluck.

Which fizzy drink is made by fermenting sweetened tea with a live culture of bacteria and yeast?

Kombucha is probably named by mistake: in Japanese the word means seaweed tea, perhaps borrowed because the gelatinous film of bacteria and yeasts on the brew looked like seaweed.

Chinese legend credits the discovery of tea to which mythical emperor?

Shennong, the legendary Divine Farmer and herbalist, is said to have discovered tea when leaves from a nearby tree drifted into his pot of boiling water.

The Classic of Tea, an eighth-century treatise on tea and its preparation, was written by whom?

Lu Yu, tradition says, was an abandoned child raised by a Buddhist monk; he refused to take the robes and ran away to join a troupe of performers before writing his tea classic around 760.

Which English diarist recorded drinking his first cup of tea in September 1660?

Samuel Pepys sent for his 'cup of tee (a China drink)' on 25 September 1660 after an office talk about war with France and Holland, then went away without a word on how it tasted.

Which princess brought the tea-drinking habit to the English court when she married Charles II in 1662?

Catherine of Braganza's dowry also brought England the islands of Bombay, which Charles II handed to the East India Company in 1668, the seed of the city of Mumbai.

The English word 'tea', unlike Portugal's 'chá', most likely arrived through which rival trading nation?

The Dutch picked up the Min Chinese word 'te', directly or through Malay traders, and their 'thee' passed into English; the Portuguese, buying through Macao, had learned the Cantonese 'cha'.

Which type of tea is wilted, bruised and only partially oxidized?

Oolong leaves are shaken and tossed in bamboo trays to bruise their edges, which is where the browning starts; the Chinese name wulong means 'black dragon'.

In Morocco, guests are welcomed with glasses of sweet green tea steeped with which fresh herb?

Mint, usually spearmint, goes into the pot with sugar and Chinese gunpowder green tea, a leaf that British traders brought to North Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The small tea glasses called ince belli, meaning 'slim-waisted', are traditionally made in what shape?

Tulip-shaped glasses are filled from a stacked double kettle: strong tea from the small pot on top, thinned to taste with boiling water from the larger one below.

As of 2016, which country out-drank the United Kingdom in tea per person, ranking second in the world?

Ireland's favourite blends are stronger than the traditional English ones, and because of that strength the tea is commonly served with milk.

Which group of compounds, also found in red wine, gives strong tea its dry, mouth-puckering bite?

Tannins bind to the proteins in saliva, which is why an over-brewed cup leaves the mouth feeling dry and puckered, just as unripe fruit can.

Which New York tea importer popularized tea bags around 1908 by shipping samples in small silk pouches?

Thomas Sullivan, the popular story goes, meant customers to empty his silk sample pouches into the pot; they dunked the whole pouch instead, and the tea bag caught on by accident.

Which brand introduced tea bags to the United Kingdom in 1953?

Tetley launched its tea bag in Britain in 1953, once wartime tea rationing had ended, decades after American tea merchants first sold tea that way.

In 1848 the East India Company sent which Scottish botanist to China to bring tea plants back to India?

Robert Fortune travelled disguised as a Chinese merchant and shipped the plants to India in Wardian cases.

Darjeeling tea, marketed as the 'Champagne of teas', is grown in the hills of which Indian state?

West Bengal's Darjeeling hills owe their prized summer flavour to insects: leafhoppers nibble the leaves, and the plants answer with defensive compounds that give the tea its grape-like 'muscatel' note.

Which English writer laid down eleven rules for the perfect brew in his 1946 essay 'A Nice Cup of Tea'?

George Orwell demanded a strong pot, tea poured into the cup before the milk and no sugar at all, yet admitted that at least four of his eleven rules were 'acutely controversial'.

Which tea region lies along India's Brahmaputra River and is known for strong, malty black tea?

Assam's tea gardens keep 'Tea Garden Time', an hour ahead of Indian Standard Time, a system set up under British rule to make the most of the region's early sunrise.

In Beatrix Potter's tale, which herbal tea does Peter Rabbit's mother give him at bedtime?

Chamomile tea was Peter's lot after his raid on the garden, 'one table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time', while his well-behaved sisters had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.

Which British prime minister's government passed the Tea Act of 1773 to rescue the ailing East India Company?

Lord North meant the act to help the company undersell smuggled tea, but colonists saw a ploy to make them accept Parliament's tea duty, and he is remembered as the minister 'who lost America'.

Britain paid for its Chinese tea by smuggling which narcotic into China, provoking war with the Qing?

Opium grown in British India was sold into China to earn back the silver spent on tea; the Chinese seizure of opium stocks at Canton triggered the First Opium War.

The tea clipper Cutty Sark, built in 1869, takes its name from a character in a poem by whom?

Robert Burns's 'Tam o' Shanter' supplies the name, the witch Nannie's short shirt; launched in 1869 as the Suez Canal opened, she later hauled Australian wool.

Afternoon tea is usually credited to Anna, the seventh Duchess of which title?

Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford, wanted something to bridge the gap between a light lunch and a dinner that could come as late as eight o'clock.

Which caffeine-free herbal tea comes from a shrub grown in South Africa's Cederberg mountains?

Rooibos means 'red bush' in Afrikaans, yet its needle-like leaves are green when cut; they turn red only as they oxidise and dry.

A traditional West Country tea centres on scones served with jam and what?

Clotted cream is the West Country staple; by tradition Devon spreads the cream on first and Cornwall the jam, a rivalry neither county will let go.

Earl Grey tea is a black tea flavoured with the oil of which citrus fruit?

Bergamot oil scents the blend named after the second Earl Grey, a British prime minister of the 1830s, who is said to have been given such a tea as a gift.

Thomas Twining opened Britain's first known tea room in 1706 at No. 216 on which London street?

Twinings opened at 216 Strand in 1706 and has traded from that address for over three centuries; its 1787 logo is claimed as the world's oldest in continuous use.

In which country did Glasgow grocer Thomas Lipton buy tea gardens in 1890?

Ceylon had turned to tea after leaf rust wrecked its coffee estates from 1869; Lipton bought gardens there so he could sell 'direct from the tea gardens to the teapot'.

Matcha is a finely ground powder of green tea leaves that have been grown how before harvest?

In the shade is the answer: covering the bushes before harvest gives matcha its vivid green colour and rich umami flavour.

The monk Eisai came home from China in 1191 with powdered tea and which school of Buddhism?

Zen monks drank tea to ward off sleep during long hours of meditation, and Eisai went on to write a treatise praising it as a tonic for body and spirit.

Chado means 'way of tea'; what does chanoyu, Japan's tea ceremony, literally mean?

Hot water for tea is all the word says: cha is tea, yu is hot water and no joins them, a plain name for a ritual that in its full form runs for hours.

Japanese green teas are mostly steamed; Chinese green teas are typically processed how?

Pan-fired in a wok has been the usual Chinese way since the early Ming dynasty; Japan kept the older Chinese method of steaming, which gives a sweeter, grassier cup.

Each leaf of Chinese gunpowder tea is rolled into what form before it is dried?

A small pellet is the form: the English name may come from the pellets' likeness to grains of gunpowder, while the Chinese name zhucha means 'pearl tea'.

Tieguanyin, the 'Iron Goddess of Mercy' tea, comes from which Chinese province?

Fujian's Anxi County is its home; in the best-known legend the goddess Guanyin appeared to a devout farmer in a dream and led him to the first bush, growing in a crevice among the rocks.

Da Hong Pao, one of the world's priciest teas, is a rock tea from which mountain range?

Wuyi Mountains cliffs hold what are said to be the original Da Hong Pao bushes, whose leaf has sold for more than its weight in gold; the tea in the shops is grown from cuttings of them.

Bubble tea, with its chewy tapioca pearls, originated in the 1980s in which place?

Taiwan: Chun Shui Tang in Taichung and Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan both claim to have invented the drink in the 1980s.

The chewy pearls in bubble tea are made from the starch of which root crop?

Cassava starch, better known as tapioca, makes the pearls; the plant reached Asia from South America in colonial times and took over desserts once made with older local starches.

Kashmiri noon chai, brewed with green tea and baking soda, is famous for which colour?

Pink is its trademark, and the name gives away the taste: 'noon' means salt in Kashmiri, so this is a tea seasoned with salt rather than sugar.

Iced tea's popularity surged after Richard Blechynden served it at the 1904 World's Fair in which US city?

St. Louis got the credit for Blechynden's free samples at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, though printed iced-tea recipes go back to the 1870s.

Which golfer gives his name to a drink of iced tea mixed with lemonade?

Arnold Palmer was so fond of the mix that it took his name; by his own telling, a woman who overheard his lunch order in Palm Springs asked for 'that Arnold Palmer drink' too.

Tibetan po cha is tea churned with salt and butter from which animal?

Yak butter is churned into tea boiled for hours from a pressed brick; the result is salty rather than sweet, and newcomers are told to think of it as a light soup.

Which country, where tea replaced costly coffee in the 20th century, drank the most tea per person in 2016?

Turkey began growing its own tea around Rize on the Black Sea coast after imported coffee turned scarce and costly in the wake of the First World War.

Which metal urn, long made in the Russian city of Tula, boils the water for a household's tea?

Samovar means 'self-boiler', and Tula made so many that Russians call a pointless errand 'taking your own samovar to Tula', their version of carrying coals to Newcastle.

Hong Kong's 'silk stocking' milk tea gets its name from the colour of what?

Hongkongers make it with evaporated milk, and the technique was declared intangible cultural heritage in 2017.

Teh tarik, often called Malaysia's national drink, is made frothy by doing what?

Pouring it between two containers is the 'pull' in its Malay name, 'pulled tea'; stalls are judged on how high and how theatrically they can stretch the stream.

Yerba mate, drunk from a gourd through a bombilla straw, comes from a plant in which genus?

Holly is the family: yerba mate is a South American cousin of the Christmas shrub, and the drink is named for its cup, since 'mate' comes from the Quechua word for a calabash gourd.

Which Star Trek captain orders his favourite drink from the replicator with the words 'Tea, Earl Grey, hot'?

Jean-Luc Picard was written as a Frenchman, yet the captain, played by Patrick Stewart, was given thoroughly British habits: Shakespeare, horse riding and his Earl Grey.

Which part of a traditional afternoon tea is eaten first?

Finger sandwiches come first, then scones, then cakes, and the order doesn't depend on the stand: some hosts stack the sandwiches at the bottom, others in the middle with the scones on top.

Which flower's blossoms are layered with tea leaves to make China's most famous scented tea?

Jasmine buds are picked by day and kept cool until evening, because the flowers open at night; only then are they mixed with the dry tea leaves to pass on their scent.

Which flower gives a tart, deep-red herbal tea that is drunk hot or iced around the world?

Hibiscus tea is brewed not from the petals but from the calyces, the cups at the base of the roselle flower, which turn fleshy and deep red as the fruit ripens.

Which group in Victorian Britain made 'high tea' its main evening meal?

Working people sat down to it after a long working day, so it had to be a full meal, where the leisured classes' afternoon tea only filled the gap before a late dinner.

What does a traditional high tea begin with?

A savoury dish, hot or cold, came first, which is why the meal was once known as 'meat-tea'; bread, butter, jam and cakes followed.

Which chequered sponge cake, wrapped in marzipan, is an afternoon-tea classic?

Battenberg is said to honour an 1884 royal wedding into the Battenberg family; its chequered slice gave the name 'Battenburg markings' to the blocks of colour on British police cars.

A traditional cucumber sandwich for afternoon tea is made on what kind of bread?

Crustless white bread, thinly buttered, holds paper-thin cucumber and little else, a daintiness that made the sandwich a writers' shorthand for the English upper classes.

In which Oscar Wilde play does host Algernon eat every cucumber sandwich before Lady Bracknell arrives for tea?

The Importance of Being Earnest has Algernon's manservant Lane cover for him, swearing gravely that there were no cucumbers in the market, 'not even for ready money'.

Which bird does the Hatter's riddle in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland compare to a writing desk?

A raven it is; the riddle had no answer until readers pestered Carroll, who offered one in 1896: both 'can produce a few notes', though very flat ones.

Which sleepy guest are the Hatter and the March Hare trying to put into the teapot as Alice leaves their party?

The Dormouse dozes through 'A Mad Tea-Party', used as a cushion by the other two, and wakes only to tell a muddled tale of three sisters who lived on treacle at the bottom of a well.

The card reading '10/6' in the Hatter's hat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shows what?

The hat's price, ten shillings and sixpence: the Hatter wears his own stock, later telling the court that he keeps hats to sell and has none of his own.

The phrase 'mad as a hatter' is usually traced to hat-makers poisoned by which metal?

Mercury was used in turning fur into felt, and hatters who breathed its fumes developed tremors and mood changes; the phrase was in print by 1829, decades before Carroll's Hatter.

Which Patriot group, led by Samuel Adams, organised the Boston Tea Party?

The Sons of Liberty had sprung up years earlier to fight the Stamp Act; on the night, some 5,000 people packed the Old South Meeting House before the raiders set off for the wharf.

Which three ships were boarded during the Boston Tea Party?

Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver reached Boston, but a fourth tea ship, the William, ran aground near Cape Cod; the Dartmouth and Beaver were American-built, owned by a Nantucket whaling family.

How did Parliament respond to the Boston Tea Party in 1774?

With the Intolerable Acts, as the colonists called them: laws that closed Boston's port and stripped Massachusetts of self-government, pushing the colonies towards war.

In 1391 the Hongwu Emperor banned pressed tea cakes as tribute, decreeing that only what form would be accepted?

Loose tea took over: after the decree, production of pressed cakes went into decline and the upper classes switched to steeping whole leaves, the method most tea drinkers still use.

Which everyday Japanese green tea, brewed from whole leaves rather than powder, did Uji grower Soen Nagatani develop in the 1730s?

Sencha came from Nagatani's method of steaming the leaves, rolling them into needles and drying them, which became the standard way of making leaf tea in Japan.

A small box or tin for keeping tea leaves is traditionally called a what?

A caddy once came with a lock, because tea was so costly that the mistress kept the key herself and the servants had no way to reach the leaves.

Britain's record 'TV pickup', a power surge from kettles boiled for tea, came at the end of which broadcast?

A World Cup penalty shootout set the record: a 2,800-megawatt jump when England's 1990 semi-final against West Germany ended. Grid staff study the TV schedules to prepare for such surges.

Which physicist explained in 1926 why tea leaves gather at the centre of a stirred cup rather than the edge?

Albert Einstein explained the tea leaf paradox in a paper about why rivers wear away their banks. Friction slows the liquid near the bottom of the cup, setting up a flow that sweeps the leaves inward.

Since the Centurion of 1945, which British fighting machines have carried a built-in vessel for brewing tea?

Tanks gained the boiling vessel because crews used to climb out and brew up over petrol cookers made from empty fuel cans. Staying inside kept them safe and shortened their breaks.

Which Star Trek captain made hot Earl Grey tea a signature order from the starship's replicator?

Jean-Luc Picard asked for the blend so often in Star Trek: The Next Generation that the order became a catchphrase. It tied the tea to Patrick Stewart's character for decades afterwards.

Butterfly pea flower tea, a caffeine-free blue infusion, turns purple when which ingredient is added to the cup?

Lemon juice changes the colour because the petals' pigment reacts to acidity, so the drink behaves like a litmus test. The same deep blue petals have been used as a dye for centuries.

Which English novelist laid down eleven rules for the perfect brew in his 1946 essay 'A Nice Cup of Tea'?

George Orwell demanded strong tea, water at the boil, and tea poured before the milk so the amount of milk could be judged exactly. His essay first ran in a newspaper, the Evening Standard.

Tea tree oil comes not from the tea plant but from a Melaleuca tree native to which country?

Australia's tea tree is thought to owe its name to Captain James Cook, who brewed the leaves of one such shrub as a stand-in for tea. The oil is distilled from the leaves.

The drink English speakers call black tea is known in several East Asian languages by the name of which colour?

Red tea is the literal translation of the Chinese name hong cha. In Chinese tea culture the label 'black tea' belongs instead to aged, fermented teas such as pu'er.

In Judith Kerr's 1968 picture book, which uninvited animal joins Sophie and her mother for tea and eats everything?

A tiger invites himself in and finishes all the food and drink the family has. The Tiger Who Came to Tea went on to become one of the best-selling children's books of all time.

Kombucha is sweetened tea fermented by a rubbery 'mother' culture made of bacteria and which other microorganism?

Yeast in the culture turns the sugar into alcohol, which the bacteria then convert into the acids behind kombucha's sour tang. The culture is nicknamed a SCOBY.

Rooibos, a caffeine-free herbal infusion, is farmed only in the Cederberg region of which country?

South Africa protects the name rooibos by law, and the European Union grants it protected designation of origin status. Every crop comes from a single district north of Cape Town.

Earl Grey tea is thought to be named after Charles Grey, who held which British office in the early 1830s?

Prime Minister Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey, led the government that abolished slavery across the British Empire in 1833. The blend is only said to have been mixed for him.

During the Crimean War, British traders diverted Baltic-bound tea to which North African country famed for mint tea?

Morocco saw its tea imports quadruple in the twenty years after an 1856 trade treaty with Britain. Sweet mint tea, poured for guests in at least three glasses, became the mark of a good host.

Which actress voiced Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper turned teapot, in the 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast?

Angela Lansbury took the part after Julie Andrews turned it down. When the songwriters asked her to perform the title song, she doubted her voice suited the melody.

At the end of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which herbal tea does Peter's mother give him at bedtime?

Chamomile tea is Peter's cure for a stomach ache after raiding Mr. McGregor's garden. His well-behaved sisters get a proper supper with blackberries instead.

The spinning teacup ride Mad Tea Party was an opening-day attraction in 1955 at which theme park?

Disneyland based the ride on the Unbirthday Party scene in the animated Alice in Wonderland. For its first few months the cups spun on a bare platform, before the famous spiral was painted on.

The word chai, used for tea in Hindi, Russian, Persian and Arabic, spread overland along which trade route?

The Silk Road carried the spoken form 'cha' into Central Asia, where it picked up a Persian ending and became chai. Nations supplied by ship mostly ended up with words like 'tea' instead.

Which coffee chain bought the Tazo tea brand in 1999 and the Teavana tea shops in 2012?

Starbucks paid $620 million for Teavana, then announced in 2017 that it would close every one of the chain's shops. Tazo had cost it just $8.1 million.

Tea magnate Thomas Lipton challenged five times between 1899 and 1930, never winning, for which sailing trophy?

The America's Cup escaped all five of his yachts, each named Shamrock. His well-publicised defeats earned him a special trophy for the best of all losers and made his tea famous in the United States.

Which flower is brewed into the crimson drink that Mexicans call agua de Jamaica and Egyptians toast weddings with?

Hibiscus tea is made from the fleshy sepals around the roselle flower rather than from its petals. Egypt calls the drink karkadé and serves it hot or over ice.

The chasen, the whisk that froths matcha in a Japanese tea ceremony, is hand-carved from a single piece of what?

Bamboo is split by hand into the whisk's fine tines, which are so delicate that a special shaper called a kusenaoshi is used to keep their curve between uses.

Which patriot society, veterans of the Stamp Act protests, organised the 1773 dumping of tea in Massachusetts?

The Sons of Liberty boiled colonial anger down to one demand: no taxes without a voice in Parliament. Their branch in the port carried out the raid on the tea ships.

Japanese genmaicha, nicknamed 'popcorn tea', blends green tea with popped grains of what?

Brown rice was added as a cheap filler, which earned genmaicha its other nickname, the people's tea. A few grains burst in the heat and look like popcorn.

The smoky blend Russian Caravan is named after overland tea shipments once carried across Asia by which animals?

Camels hauled the tea across the Mongolian steppes, and tradition says the smoke of countless campfires along the way gave the cargo its flavour.

Tea clippers such as those in the Great Tea Race of 1866 were soon undercut by steamships using which new canal?

The Suez Canal opened in 1869 and gave steamships a route about 3,000 nautical miles shorter than the clippers' voyage round the Cape of Good Hope. The sailing ships' tea trade collapsed.

Which singer-songwriter's 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman includes the songs 'Wild World' and 'Father and Son'?

Cat Stevens, a former art student, also drew the picture on the album's cover. He recorded the songs across three studios in the spring and summer of 1970.

East Frisia, where locals drink about 300 litres of tea a head each year, is a coastal region of which country?

Germany as a whole prefers coffee, yet East Frisians drink more tea per head than any other people. They pour it over slow-melting rock sugar and never stir the cup.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter's quarrel with Time has frozen his tea party's clocks at what hour?

Six o'clock is tea-time, so the Hatter is condemned to a party that never ends. Time took offence after the Queen of Hearts accused the Hatter of murdering the time during a song.

Which British tea brand began dressing chimpanzees in human clothes for its television adverts in 1956?

PG Tips called its chimps the Tipps family and hired stars such as Peter Sellers to voice them. The animals came from Twycross Zoo, and the campaign ran until 2002.

The tea caddy, a lockable box for costly leaves, is believed to be named after the catty, an Asian unit of what?

Weight is what the catty measured, at about a pound and a third. Tea was so expensive when it first reached Europe that households kept it under lock and key.

Which word, borrowed from French, describes herbal infusions such as peppermint that contain no true tea leaves?

Tisane first entered English in the Middle Ages meaning a medicinal drink, then was borrowed a second time in the 20th century with its herbal sense. Most tisanes are naturally free of caffeine.

What is the term, built on the French word for 'cup', for telling fortunes from the tea leaves left after drinking?

Tasseography also covers reading coffee grounds and wine sediment. The practice followed tea and coffee along their trade routes, and coffee readings were reported in Ottoman palaces in the 1500s.

Which style of tea is named for the fine hairs on the unopened buds of the tea plant?

White tea brews to a pale yellow in spite of its name. The hairs give the plant's youngest buds a whitish look, and the leaves are among the least processed of any tea.

Wadmalaw Island, home to a rare commercial tea plantation once used by Lipton for research, lies in which US state?

South Carolina's Charleston Tea Garden grew out of a research station Lipton set up when it feared unrest abroad would cut off its imports. The company ran the station for about twenty-five years.

In the bush song 'Waltzing Matilda', the swagman brews his campfire tea in a metal can known as what?

Billy is short for billycan, a lightweight metal bucket hung over the fire to boil water. Canadians know the same pot as a billy tin.

Lahpet thoke, a salad made from pickled tea leaves, is a much-loved delicacy of which Southeast Asian country?

Myanmar is one of the few places where tea is eaten as well as drunk. The leaves are fermented first, then tossed into the salad.

The London Fog, an Earl Grey latte sweetened with vanilla syrup, was invented in the 1990s in which Canadian city?

Vancouver café regular Mary Loria came up with the drink while she was pregnant. She has said she does not know who gave it its misleading English name.

The British Standards Institution's method for brewing a cup of tea won which tongue-in-cheek award in 1999?

The Ig Nobel Prize for Literature honoured the standard, which calls for black tea to brew for exactly six minutes. It was written so that tasters could compare teas fairly, not to dictate the perfect cup.

Which philosopher argued about the burden of proof by imagining a teapot in orbit between Earth and Mars?

Bertrand Russell pointed out that nobody could disprove his teapot if he added that it was too small for any telescope to see. That, he argued, gave no one a reason to believe in it.

Celestial Seasonings, the herbal tea company behind the Sleepytime blend, has its home in which Colorado city?

Boulder is where co-founders Mo Siegel and Wyck Hay started out in 1969, gathering wild herbs in the Rocky Mountains to blend into teas. Sleepytime followed three years later.

In the tea trade, the term orange pekoe, often seen on black tea boxes, describes what about the tea?

Its leaf grade is all the label promises: whole leaves of a set size, with no fruit involved. One theory links the 'orange' to the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau.

What name do tea growers give each seasonal harvest of new shoots, as in Darjeeling's prized 'first' and 'second'?

Flush harvests differ sharply: the first, picked after winter dormancy, is light and floral, while the second gains a muscatel aroma once leafhoppers have attacked the leaves.

A colleague's claim to taste whether milk went in first inspired a famous tea experiment by which statistician?

Ronald Fisher used the 'lady tasting tea' test in his 1935 book The Design of Experiments to introduce the null hypothesis, an idea every statistics student has met since.

Which Japanese tea master, champion of the wabi-cha tradition, was ordered by Hideyoshi to take his own life?

Sen no Rikyū had been one of the warlord's closest confidants until the two fell out over differences of opinion and his independence. He had earlier served Oda Nobunaga as tea master.

Which British statesman, advised by a Twining, cut the tax on tea from 119 percent to 12.5 percent in 1784?

Pitt the Younger wanted to raise revenue through legitimate sales after a century of punishing duties had fed the smugglers. His Commutation Act effectively ended the illegal trade.

In a Japanese legend, tea bushes sprouted where which monk's severed eyelids fell after he dozed off meditating?

Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, is said to have nodded off after nine years of meditating before a wall and cut the lids away in disgust. Another version gives the tale to the Buddha.

Gorreana, the oldest surviving tea plantation in Europe, lies on São Miguel in which Atlantic island group?

The Azores turned to tea after blight all but destroyed the islands' famous orange groves by 1864. Gorreana is one of only two estates left there.

The much-recorded standard 'Tea for Two' was written for which 1920s stage musical, a Broadway hit in 1925?

No, No, Nanette gave composer Vincent Youmans the biggest success of his career with this duet. Audiences first heard it during the show's Chicago tryout in 1924.

Portuguese says 'chá' rather than a word like 'tea' because its traders picked up the term in which port?

Macau gave Portuguese traders the Cantonese pronunciation, and English borrowed 'cha' from them in the 1590s, decades before the word 'tea' arrived.

Japanese hōjicha stands apart from other green teas because its leaves are treated how, in a pot over charcoal?

Roasted at about 150 °C, the leaves lose their green colour, which sets hōjicha apart at a glance. Most other Japanese teas are steamed instead.